The brief: To photograph the interiors of six, Ramsgate sea front located, luxury holiday apartments in two styles; to give a sense of the space offered within each and to also produce photographic interior shots that demonstrated the luxury through the fixtures, furnishings and fittings.
Our glass for the shoot:
Nikon 12-24mm f/4
Nikon 50mm f/1.8
Sigma 100mm macro f/2.8
Lights: 1 x 500w/s flash head, 2 x 150w/s flash heads, Nikon SB-800 Speedlight, 120cm octagonal softbox, 40cm square softbox, shoot through umbrella. Radio transmitter
Reflector.
Two extension leads.
We met Emma Doherty at Sion House, a white fronted building overlooking the Ramsgate harbour, and the location of two of the apartments. As identified in our pre-consultation meeting, it was paramount that the interior photographs should encompass the wonderful views as well as the interior standard.
Thanks to our scoping of the apartments the week prior, we knew what lighting was going to be required and what to expect. Two steep flights of stairs later we reached the apartments.
The lower apartment foreground view was not as pleasing as the background and as we were unable to reach an angle to cut out the foreground, we chose not to expose for that particular view. We concentrated on getting some wide angles to show the size of the rooms and picked out the details in the kitchen and furnishings. In the upper apartment, the penthouse, the views of the sea and harbour were stunning! Showing these views alongside the luxurious finish of the properties would show the maximum potential of the property and give the interior photographs real impact.
We started in the fabulous bedroom. From our previous visit, and as with many (if not most) properties we knew that the difference in stops between the window view and the interior would be too great to avoid having to carefully light the whole room.
The large octagonal softbox was use to light/fill the larger expanse of the rooms. This can be achieved using various methods - such as mutliple speedlights bounced off of walls and ceilings - but for the room size the octobox worked well. Exposure was determined from light readings from the window and various points in the interior. We arrived at our settings by:
The resulting images were crisp, clean and most importantly showcased the view from the Penthouse and what you could expect to wake up to each morning. The same lighting set up was used for the lounge / dining room / kitchen at the top of the property.
As all of Emma's holiday homes were fully booked over the summer period, so we were actually shooting in the turnaround time between guests! We had a total shooting time of three hours, including set up, take down and travel between properties!
Regency House was next. The building was aptly named as once inside we saw that they were indeed regal, and massive! We had not seen these properties in our preliminary meeting (they were a last minute request) and so were flying blind at this point but still achieved the desired results.
The following day, we had two further properties to shoot and actually less time and had to work alongside the cleaners. The first property was very contemporary, with lots of clean lines. In the bathroom, we used the SB-800 speedlight to bounced light off the ceiling to light the space, as there was no natural daylight available. In such a small space, finding interesting angles was a little challenging and so Gareth decided to lay down - in the shower! Laying down in the shower cubicle and shooting up gave an amazing perspective of not just the shower, but the whole bathroom. Perhaps a little abstract but you have to explore all angles.
ProcessingBack in the office we took a look at the images we had taken in detail. We had managed to take over 600 photographs over the two days. As with any 12mm wide-angle, we had to deal with a reasonable amount of barrelling distortion which was corrected in Lightroom using its lens correction tool. We also then had a chance to look at the finer detail of each shot, checking for random cables that we had not tucked away, the little things that make the whole. In addition to our own eyes, we were lucky to have had some advice from an excellent interiors and architectural photographer, John McKenzie. John's many years of shooting and processing experienced greatly helped, thank you John.
If you are a property developer, architect, estate agent, why not contact us and see how we can greatly enhance your portfolio.
À bientôt
Michelle
